Hi, this is Lynne Jacob, founder of MLJ Coaching International and author of The 7 Simple Strategies
for Success.
Now, I don't expect you to be able to read all these 7 Simple Strategies for Success
from this business card, but you can find them on my website.
What I want to share with you today comes from Strategy #5, which is Find, Hire, Train,
and Retain them: Lead an All-Star Team.
One of the things that I'm working on right now, which I frequently do, is helping a key
employee become the key employee that you see in him or her.
For example, I've worked with new managers in departments of big corporate, and they
were a fabulous technician.
Let's talk about this one guy in particular, Steve.
You can see him on my website on the Testimonials page in the little audio.
His name is Steve Benton from Canadian Tire.
I'm using him as an example because I've got his testimonial on the website and you can
go and see it.
Steve's story was that he was a technician for 13 years, and a great one.
So how do many companies -- not just corporate, but even the privately owned companies that
I work with primarily -- how do we reward these people?
Well, we give them a better position.
We give them a supervisory position, a leadership position or a managerial position of a department.
There is a difference.
But at any rate, we take this 13-year technician who's been doing a fabulous job and we give
him the manager of the department position.
Now, he hadn't had any training to be a manager at this point -- he did get some later, of
course -- but we worked together in a coaching partnership, and one of the things that happened,
just inside of the six month coaching partnership, was that their sales increased in that department.
He'd only been there for like seven months in total, because he'd been there for one
month by the time we started working together.
But what were some of the things that he really, really needed help with?
It was leadership.
It wasn't managing the numbers, but yes, he did get help with that.
Not from me, but he did get help with that.
But it was about leading a team.
I can tell you that as Steve was raising the bar, as I say, he was very tempted to drop
the bar.
You know, dip the bar down a little bit to catch this person, or drop it down a little
bit to catch this person.
The beauty of coaching for him was the accountability to follow through on holding that bar in place.
So for him, he had been a technician, and now he was a supervisor and a manager of a
department, and one of his biggest problems was being a strict leader.
Tough, okay, but not an unkind or unfair leader.
It was all about being a good leader.
So this is the "train."
They found him, he was already in their company, they already had hired him.
What they needed to do for Steve, for the benefit of Steve and for the benefit of the
company, was to train him.
I can tell you that they have, by doing this, retained him, where there was another person
who got the same sort of reward for being a great technician, and they bumped him up
into being a manager of a department, and it was within a few months that he was gone.
He left because he just didn't feel like he had the support.
In fact, it was that he didn't have the knowledge and he didn't have the confidence.
So when you are raising your people up to a new level because you hired them as a technician,
maybe, several years ago, and they've become a really key person on your team, and now
you want them to share all of their knowledge with the others on your team, you're making
them a leader -- make sure that you get very good training and support, as well as accountability,
for this person.
Your company will benefit fabulously from it.
That's the training portion, and I'll be doing another few videos to talk about retaining
them -- of course, that's a part of it -- and finding and hiring them.
So stay tuned, and this is Lynne Jacob of MLJ Coaching International, where I help people
just like you enjoy more profits, tons more fun, and a custom-built retirement that's
ready and waiting for you on that day that you calmly and coolly say, "You know what,
hon?
I've had enough."
Talk to you soon.